It's beginning to look a lot like checkpoint, especially tonight in Newport Beach.
The Newport Beach Police Department says it will be running a sobriety stop somewhere in the city from 8 tonight through 2 a.m. Thursday (or the early morning before Christmas Eve).
Public Information Officer Jennifer Manzella previously revealed her department would be conducting saturation patrols—where extra officers cover streets known for drunken driving arrests, crashes and deaths—through Jan. 3 as part of the statewide “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” anti-DUI winter holiday campaign. Several other Orange County law enforcement agencies have saturation patrols deployed as well.
The Costa Mesa Police Department released these figures from its Friday, Dec. 18, checkpoint along Harbor Boulevard and Flower Street:
- 3,252 Vehicles through the checkpoint
- 289 Vehicles screened
- 18 DUI investigations administered
- 4 DUI-Alcohol suspects arrested
- 6 Drivers cited/arrested for operating a vehicle unlicensed or on with a suspended license
Newport Beach cops offer these tips to keep from becoming a statistic:
- Plan a safe way to get home before you attend the party. In addition to impairing your reaction time, alcohol also impairs your judgment. If you’re impaired, you are more likely to choose to drive drunk.
- You have options. Designate a sober driver, take public transportation or a car service, or call a sober friend or family member to give you a ride home.
- Walking while impaired can be just as dangerous as drunk driving. If your plans involve walking home, designate a sober friend to walk with you.
- If you see someone you think is about to drive while impaired, take their keys away and help them to get home safely.
Checkpoints, saturation patrols and other DUI enforcement are funded by California Office of Traffic Safety grants, through the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.